


Deep-Sixed

by apprenticenanoswarm



Category: Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Venom (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 20:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18290108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apprenticenanoswarm/pseuds/apprenticenanoswarm
Summary: Instead of Eddie Brock, the symbiote hooks up with the Sinister Six.





	Deep-Sixed

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: murder, implied cannibalism, the Six being, for the most part, themselves, and the symbiote being…easily influenced.

 

Being bonded to Electro is torture.

The two of them are psychologically ill-suited, for one thing. Max Dillon is a prey animal who, through happenstance, found himself flung to the top of the food chain. Consequently, he reels between extremes of irrational self-doubt and equally irrational self-assurance, which, in practical terms, means that half the time he underestimates the symbiote’s abilities and half the time he overestimates them. He’s fidgety and talkative and overall exhausting to reside in.

“So, Slimey, you’re from space, right? You know Thor? The Avenger? The hammer guy? He’s also from space. Got this whole magical space kingdom. Spoiled fucking asshole. Anyway, his hammer – it can make lightning. And everyone acts like that’s a  _big_  fucking deal, like ‘ooh, mighty Thor, holy crap, that’s sooo awesome’ – except it’s  _not_ , because  ** _I_**  can do lightning, hell, I can do  _all_  the stuff he does. Most of the stuff he does, anyway. I do it better, too! Don’t need a fancy hammer to give people grief, I can just point one finger at ‘em and  _zap_.”

“ **Yes. I know. You’ve mentioned. Repeatedly.** ”

But it’s their physical incompatibility that poses the greater problem. An endless storm rages beneath Max Dillon’s skin. When he coughs, his lungs crackle. His kidneys hum. It stings the symbiote, unsettles it, and even though there are benefits to having such a powerful host, the symbiote can’t endure such conditions for more than a week before slithering into one of the many rats that infest Dillon’s apartment and making its escape.

0

Mysterio is a fun host.

He reminds the symbiote of an avian species they knew back on the homeworld; bright feathers, puffed up chest, strutting about, throwing its head back and dancing for the attention of the female avians (except Mysterio’s strut is for everyone, not just the females, and, interestingly, not remotely sexual. He doesn’t seem to possess mating urges, which is another plus; in that regard, they are compatible).

He’s a good sport about the whole thing too, taking the symbiote’s various requirements in stride and readily taking advantage of the gifts it offers – primarily to embellish his image. The fishbowl is no longer silver but black with an oily sheen. His cape grows dark tendrils that replace the silly smoke clouds, writhing and coiling around his feet. The eyes on his costume are replaced by two grinning mouths.

“You’re good, kid,” Quentin Beck says, admiring himself in the mirror. “But I could make you great.”

He introduces the symbiote to movies and video games. Horror, for the most part. They spend hours curled up in his lair playing Silent Hill and watching The Thing, Terminator, Alien, anything Quentin thinks they could learn from. It’s an invaluable education in style. The symbiote learns from the masters what triggers primal fear in humans, how to use its innate morphological abilities not just to kill, but to astonish and entrance.

They make a good team.

0

Which makes being stolen by Kraven all the more irritating.

But also…intriguing.

Sergei Kravinoff’s nature matches the symbiote’s own. He’s a predator to his bones, his every waking thought shadowed by concerns of where the next meal will be coming from. It’s a simplicity the symbiote appreciates after its last two rather more scatter-brained hosts.

Kraven’s straightforwardness also strips their relationship down to its bare essentials. The symbiote is a weapon for Kraven to hunt with and vice versa. The two of them rarely talk. They communicate in bursts of emotion while tracking prey – wariness, hunger, anticipation – and afterwards, Kraven no more shares his feelings or thoughts with the symbiote than he would with his rifle or his knives.

For months, they tear a red gash in the forests and jungles of this world, the symbiote taking advantage of their expeditions to learn more about Earth’s wildly diverse ecosystems. They kill bears, bulls, panthers, men, and it feels right, it feels like the way things are meant to be, like stable, functional symbiosis  _should_  feel, and…

…and it’s so  _boring_.

The next time Kraven joins up with the Sinister Six for their umpteenth attempt to eliminate Spider-Man, the symbiote makes a decision.

0

The Vulture is a novelty.  

Like Kraven, he’s a predator. His body, however, is decades older than any other human host thus far. There are textures to it the symbiote’s never experienced before and a thousand threats to be dealt with. Arthritis, macular degeneration, gallstones; every day, it must wage a small war with its host’s own biology. It wins, naturally. And it quite enjoys the regular exercise.

Adrian Toomes, however, is fundamentally uncomfortable with its presence.

“I don’t like feeling watched all the time,” he snaps, holding out the jam jar he just finished rinsing out. “Might as well be living in prison again, or a fucking nursing home, with wardens and nurses knowing whenever I take a shit. Just get in, alien. I’ll put you on the windowsill so you can watch the birds.”

It fumes. “ **Privacy, secrets, all this human nonsense – I could make you a god among men if you would just share more of yourself with me! In true symbiosis, my host should be the most intimate of partners!** ”

He laughs, cracked and bitter. “I had a partner, once. I don’t ever want another. Jar. Now.”

All these men, the symbiote thinks as it sits in the jar while Toomes showers, are so different. Yet they all share the same disadvantage; they can’t seem to form the sort of functional social connections by which most humans navigate their way through society. If they were symbiotes, such a fundamental defect, this lack of a basic survival skill, would be grounds for execution. On Earth, they are allowed to simply hide away from the world, living their odd, isolated lives, occasionally coming together into their motley crew of six to bond over their inability to bond with others.

In a way, it makes them all inadequate hosts. On the other hand, as specimens, they are enlightening.

But Toomes is closed to it, clamped up and unable to reveal anything more than what it already knows. Time to move on.

0

Sandman is kind.

Terrified and confused, it flees to the next host.

0

Doctor Octopus is – there isn’t a word in the symbiote’s own language but there is in English, all five previous hosts have known it and used it in contemplation of their alleged leader – a prick.

He is also the best host the symbiote has ever had, human or otherwise.

“Adequate,” he says as the Avengers’ corpses lie cooling at their feet.

The rest of the Six stare at them, frozen. For all their cruelties and flaws, this isn’t what they imagined. Not what they wanted.

Silly little things.

Surveying their erstwhile allies, Otto and the symbiote’s thoughts blend, blur, and reach the inevitable conclusion that, regrettably, they are liabilities.

And they smell  _delicious_.

 


End file.
